Tribute to Elmore James

Is the blues—as more than a few contend—all about "getting' drunk and losin' yer baby"? Let's consider that for a few beats...

Elmore James is probably 99% on the second side of that blues equation; he's not much on memorializing gettin' drunk, as in hell-raising down at the local juke joint. Instead, losin' his baby is what he sings about; his drinkin' songs are geared toward gettin' some gal off his mind.  Case in point: One More Drink.

Goodbye Baby stands tall as one of the top "losin' yer baby" songs. But note, he's the one ditchin' her!—a tune immortal!

Here's the one to play over and over for when that muddy shoe is on the other foot—that is, when she ditches you! Something Inside Me.

Perhaps his two most popular tunes are It Hurts Me Too and Dust My Broom. Classics: he's downhearted but he shakes out that broom in the morning in a kind of salute to another day! That's the blues—life goes on and somehow a wellspring of optimism rises (eventually) from out of the darkest of days.

And then there is the one that Stevie Ray Vaughn picked up on: The Sky Is Crying.

Finally, let's go out on Shake Your Money Maker that 'standard,' made popular by Magic Sam, Houndog Taylor, and a bunch of other bluesmen down through time.

In the end, Elmore James stands firm as the primal mover and shaker of that fallin' apart sound, and as a solid master and commander of the blues slide guitar. He came from a nobler generation that didn't glamorize gettin' your head tore up just to carouse in public with other dirty drunks. No, Elmore James was a gentleman—one bluesman who suffered more from wimmen than from whiskey.

Let that be a lesson to you youngin's out thar! But oh yes, blues is surely about getting' drunk and losin' yer baby. Maybe though, the former should mostly follow the latter; we're all subject to heartbreak but not all of us drink as an anti-dote to all and every old thing. (That in itself is a hard blues lesson to learn.)

For more on the blues, see The Blues Memoir of Stubby Knuckles (scroll to the bottom of the page).

For more on Elmore James (and a ton of other recording artists), I recommend goin to the place I snagged the bluesman’s portrait at the top of this page: From the Vaults